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🔗 Biography 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 History of Science 🔗 India 🔗 India/Indian history workgroup 🔗 India/Tamil Nadu

Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS (; listen ; 22 December 1887 – 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician who lived during the British Rule in India. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation: "He tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered". Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal partnership with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognizing Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that Hardy said had "defeated him and his colleagues completely", in addition to rediscovering recently proven but highly advanced results.

During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Nearly all his claims have now been proven correct. The Ramanujan Journal, a scientific journal, was established to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan, and his notebooks—containing summaries of his published and unpublished results—have been analyzed and studied for decades since his death as a source of new mathematical ideas. As late as 2011 and again in 2012, researchers continued to discover that mere comments in his writings about "simple properties" and "similar outputs" for certain findings were themselves profound and subtle number theory results that remained unsuspected until nearly a century after his death. He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his original letters, Hardy stated that a single look was enough to show they could only have been written by a mathematician of the highest calibre, comparing Ramanujan to mathematical geniuses such as Euler and Jacobi.

In 1919, ill health—now believed to have been hepatic amoebiasis (a complication from episodes of dysentery many years previously)—compelled Ramanujan's return to India, where he died in 1920 at the age of 32. His last letters to Hardy, written in January 1920, show that he was still continuing to produce new mathematical ideas and theorems. His "lost notebook", containing discoveries from the last year of his life, caused great excitement among mathematicians when it was rediscovered in 1976.

A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess. "An equation for me has no meaning," he once said, "unless it expresses a thought of God."

🔗 Russia 🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Russia/science and education in Russia 🔗 Switzerland 🔗 Anthroponymy

In mathematics and physics, many topics are named in honor of Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), who made many important discoveries and innovations. Many of these items named after Euler include their own unique function, equation, formula, identity, number (single or sequence), or other mathematical entity. Many of these entities have been given simple and ambiguous names such as Euler's function, Euler's equation, and Euler's formula.

Euler's work touched upon so many fields that he is often the earliest written reference on a given matter. In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler.

🔗 History 🔗 Economics 🔗 Politics 🔗 Trade 🔗 Politics/Libertarianism

Mercantilism is a nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy. In other words, it seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country and use those resources for one-sided trade.

The concept aims to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus, and it includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Historically, such policies may have contributed to war and motivated colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one writer to another and has evolved over time.

Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy. Before it fell into decline, mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe and some areas in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization. Some commentators argue that it is still practised in the economies of industrializing countries in the form of economic interventionism.

With the efforts of supranational organizations such as the World Trade Organization to reduce tariffs globally, non-tariff barriers to trade have assumed a greater importance in neomercantilism.

🔗 Crime 🔗 Law 🔗 England 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Law Enforcement 🔗 Sociology 🔗 University of Oxford 🔗 British crime

The St Scholastica Day riot took place in Oxford, England, on 10 February 1355, Saint Scholastica's Day. The disturbance began when two students from the University of Oxford complained about the quality of wine served to them in the Swindlestock Tavern, which stood on Carfax, in the centre of the town. The students quarrelled with the taverner; the argument quickly escalated to blows. The inn's customers joined in on both sides, and the resulting melee turned into a riot. The violence started by the bar brawl continued over three days, with armed gangs coming in from the countryside to assist the townspeople. University halls and students' accommodation were raided and the inhabitants murdered; there were some reports of clerics being scalped. Around 30 townsfolk were killed, as were up to 63 members of the university.

Violent disagreements between townspeople and students had arisen several times previously, and 12 of the 29 coroners' courts held in Oxford between 1297 and 1322 concerned murders by students. The University of Cambridge was established in 1209 by scholars who left Oxford following the lynching of two students by the town's citizens.

King Edward III sent judges to the town with commissions of oyer and terminer to determine what had gone on and to advise what steps should be taken. He came down on the side of the university authorities, who were given additional powers and responsibilities to the disadvantage of the town's authorities. The town was fined 500 marks and its mayor and bailiffs were sent to the Marshalsea prison in London. John Gynwell, the Bishop of Lincoln, imposed an interdict on the town for one year, which banned all religious practices, including services (except on key feast days), burials and marriages; only baptisms of young children were allowed.

An annual penance was imposed on the town: each year, on St Scholastica's Day, the mayor, bailiffs and sixty townspeople were to attend a Mass at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin for those killed; the town was also made to pay the university a fine of one penny for each scholar killed. The practice was dropped in 1825; in 1955—the 600th anniversary of the riots—in an act of conciliation the mayor was given an honorary degree and the vice-chancellor was made an honorary freeman of the city.

🔗 Psychology

Cabin fever refers to the distressing claustrophobic irritability or restlessness experienced when a person, or group, is stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended period of time. A person may be referred to as stir-crazy, derived from the use of stir to mean 'prison'.

A person may experience cabin fever in a situation such as being isolated within a vacation cottage out in the country, spending long periods underwater in a submarine, or being otherwise isolated from civilization. During cabin fever, a person may experience sleepiness or sleeplessness, have a distrust of anyone they are with, or have an urge to go outside even in adverse conditions such as poor weather or limited visibility. The concept is also invoked humorously to indicate simple boredom from being home alone for an extended period of time.

Cabin fever is not itself a disease and there is no prognosis. However, related symptoms can lead the sufferer to make irrational decisions that could potentially threaten their life or the life of the group with whom they are confined. Some examples would be suicide or paranoia, or leaving the safety of a cabin during a terrible snow storm that one may be stuck in.

🔗 Internet 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Transhumanism 🔗 Google

The Google effect, also called digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines. According to the first study about the Google effect people are less likely to remember certain details they believe will be accessible online. However, the study also claims that people's ability to learn information offline remains the same. This effect may also be seen as a change to what information and what level of detail is considered to be important to remember.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Russia/science and education in Russia 🔗 Geology

The Kola Superdeep Borehole (Russian: Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) is the result of a scientific drilling project of the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District, on the Kola Peninsula. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, and later the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rig. Boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest, SG-3, reached 12,262 metres (40,230 ft; 7.619 mi) in 1989 and is the deepest artificial point on Earth. The borehole is 23 centimetres (9 in) in diameter.

In terms of true vertical depth, it is the deepest borehole in the world. For two decades it was also the world's longest borehole in terms of measured depth along the well bore, until it was surpassed in 2008 by the 12,289-metre-long (40,318 ft) Al Shaheen oil well in Qatar, and in 2011 by the 12,345-metre-long (40,502 ft) Sakhalin-I Odoptu OP-11 Well (offshore from the Russian island of Sakhalin).

🔗 London 🔗 Holidays 🔗 Christianity 🔗 River Thames 🔗 Christianity/Christmas

The River Thames frost fairs were held on the tideway of the River Thames in London, England in some winters, starting at least as early as the late 7th century all the way until the early 19th century. Most were held between the early 17th and early 19th centuries during the period known as the Little Ice Age, when the river froze over most frequently. During that time the British winter was more severe than it is now, and the river was wider and slower, further impeded by the medieval Old London Bridge.

Even at its peak, in the mid-17th century, the Thames in London froze less often than modern legend sometimes suggests, never exceeding about one year in ten except for four winters between 1649 and 1666. From 1400 until the removal of the medieval London Bridge in 1835, there were 24 winters in which the Thames was recorded to have frozen over at London; if "more or less frozen over" years (in parentheses) are included, the number is 26: 1408, 1435, 1506, 1514, 1537, 1565, 1595, 1608, 1621, 1635, 1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1677, 1684, 1695, 1709, 1716, 1740, (1768), 1776, (1785), 1788, 1795, and 1814. Of the 24, the numbers in each century were: 15th two, 16th five, 17th ten, 18th six, 19th one. The Thames freezes over more often upstream, beyond the reach of the tide, especially above the weirs, of which Teddington Lock is the lowest. The last great freeze of the higher Thames was in 1962–63.

Frost fairs were a rare event even in the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age. Some of the recorded frost fairs were in 695, 1608, 1683-4, 1716, 1739–40, 1789, and 1814. Recreational cold weather winter events were far more common elsewhere in Europe, for example in the Netherlands. These events in other countries as well as the winter festivals and carnivals around the world in present times can also be considered frost fairs. However, very few of them have actually used that title.

During the Great Frost of 1683–84, the severest frost recorded in England, the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London. Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries), causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of many harbours.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Websites 🔗 Websites/Computing 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 Sociology/social movements 🔗 Conservatism 🔗 Gender Studies 🔗 Feminism 🔗 Men's Issues

The manosphere is a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists (MRAs), incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry (hatred of men). Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill", a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.

The manosphere overlaps with the far-right and alt-right communities. It has also been associated with online harassment and has been implicated in radicalizing men into misogynist beliefs and the glorification of violence against women. Some sources have associated manosphere-based radicalization with mass shootings motivated by misogyny. The manosphere received significant media coverage following the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California, the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, and the 2018 Toronto van attack, as well as the online harassment campaign against women in the video game industry known as GamerGate.

Major figures within the movement include various social media influencers, including Andrew Tate, Amrou "Myron Gaines" Fudl, Adin Ross, Roosh V, Carl Benjamin and Jordan Peterson.

🔗 Computer Security 🔗 Computer Security/Computing 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science

In computer security, a cold boot attack (or to a lesser extent, a platform reset attack) is a type of side channel attack in which an attacker with physical access to a computer performs a memory dump of a computer's random access memory by performing a hard reset of the target machine. Typically, cold boot attacks are used to retrieve encryption keys from a running operating system for malicious or criminal investigative reasons. The attack relies on the data remanence property of DRAM and SRAM to retrieve memory contents that remain readable in the seconds to minutes after power has been removed.

An attacker with physical access to a running computer typically executes a cold boot attack by cold-booting the machine and booting a lightweight operating system from a removable disk to dump the contents of pre-boot physical memory to a file. An attacker is then free to analyze the data dumped from memory to find sensitive data, such as the keys, using various forms of key finding attacks. Since cold boot attacks target random access memory, full disk encryption schemes, even with a trusted platform module installed are ineffective against this kind of attack. This is because the problem is fundamentally a hardware (insecure memory) and not a software issue. However, malicious access can be prevented by limiting physical access and using modern techniques to avoid storing sensitive data in random access memory.